Sicily is a territory that, for excellence, lends itself to the passage.

Passages and migratory flows both human and animal that from Africa sail the Mediterranean Sea and land in the middle of it where they find short rest and then continue the journey to the promised lands. An island. A strip of land surrounded by the sea, morphologically closed and that feels a strong need in being opened to not die. During the centuries the migration flows that passed from Sicily have culturally enriched both the territory and its population that lived it, recounting in the meantime its history and even by varying the somatic traits. Probably for this reason is hosting an inborn attitude that distinguishes them and that goes hand in hand with a tendency to migrate.

Through the project “LOST” curated by Jan Kage have been highlighted issues of migration and immigration that poured its echo on German territory. Going back along the source of this echo, the curator’s research dates back to the stream of migrants focusing on what is dissipating, is lost and dies during the journey and that, unfortunately, goes unnoticed in the eyes of the media and therefore does not fix in people’s memories.

In synergy with “LOST” and following the continuity with BOCS’ ideals, Giuseppe Lana and Claudio Cocuzza try to give an answer to the issues highlighted by Kage through the project “Give a way to give a way”.

The love for his territory is what led Giuseppe Lana to his research as artistic director of BOCS and around which, over the years, has created a small community of artists who have gravitated there and still gravitate and whose research plays in the whole home ground. Through this project, at some of the fellow travelers, was addressed the invitation to take on the new responsibility to omit their work to give space some newcomers that they themselves have chosen. Filippo Leonardi, Gianluca Lombardo, Sebastiano Mortellaro, Marco Scifo, Canecapovolto, Stefania Galegati, Lisa Wade, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, /barbaragurrieri/group and Stefania Zocco are the artists invited by Lana.

As a backdrop to this event will be the Berlin Schau Festern creating thus an exchange of locations in response to the previous collaboration that was presented to the BOCS. The intent is to suggest a new approach towards art, in sharp contrast with the ruinous and rampant self-referentiality cliché that feeds the individualism.

If the artist is a filter in the world and synthesize what he lives looking for the spirit of the times, today’s research moves from what previously was the creation of a product to the creation of an attitude. Its function is to restart the consciences and the exchange for a new enrichment. The act to delegate omitting their own work represents a bet with the future and the results will be unexpected.

Social work? No!

An invitation to build a new context whose concept spreads in horizontal and takes roots in the consciencesbefore its takeoff.

“Give way to give a way”is far from the didactics. It asks, to those that have been chosen, to stop for a moment and freeze their own artistic practice, in order to make a reflection not on what they could do for the territory, but open themselves to someone else’s thought giving them the priority /pass the baton.

The times are achanging. Politically, economically, socially, generally. Many people feel this way. But no one seems to know if for the better or worse. And where the trip is going to nobody can tell, as well. The general tendency is an attitude of closed eyes. The hope that the status quo will be maintained. There are signs that signal the opposite though. Three artists that live and work more or less comfortably in Berlin come to BOCS in Sicily. In the last years a stream of poor refugees came the other way – through Italy to Berlin to live there as illegals. In tents. With no permission to work. Without being granted dignity. Living at the far edge of society. Out of sight.

Their presence is being ignored. As is the circumstance that some estimated 25.000 refugees drowned in the mediterenean sea in the last 25 years. This denial questions the core values of European societies. These people are not present in the collective conscience nor the bigger discourses. They are not present in our daily lives. Not visible in the cities. They are lost. As lost as the society that ignores them and with them denies itself. By negleglecting their own core principals in practice the European societies themsleves seem clueless and lost themselves. There is a doubble displacement: With the displaced persons comes a psychological collective displacemnt through ignorance. Society has lost itself.

www.bebocs.it

www.schau-fenster.info

www.aninabrisolla.com

www.thomaseller.com

www.ovguozen.com

www.yaneq.de

Title: Anina Brisolla, lost_006.psd (study for sicily), 2013

ANINA BRISOLLA

Anina Brisolla was born in Hamburg in 1976. She lives and works in Berlin. She studied art at School of Visual Arts, New York and aki – akademie voor beeldende kunst, Enschede (NL). Brisolla has shown her work at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien (Berlin 2012), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2011), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010), the KunstFilmBiennale (Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2009), among others. Her work was included recently in “pieces” at KWADRAT, Berlin, “The pleasure house is about to burn down” at Galerie Jaap Sleper, Utrecht, NL and “INTROSPECTION – Die verborgenen Wirklichkeiten des Künstlers”, curated by Dr. Rolf Lauter at artlab mannheim, Mannheim.

THOMAS ELLER

Thomas Eller is an artist and curator. He lives in Berlin and New York. From 1990 until today he has been exhibiting extensively in galleries and museums in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He is recipient of several prizes: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Prize, 1996, Villa Romana Prize, Florence, 2000, Art Omi International Arts Center, NY, 2002 and Käthe-Kollwitz-Prize, Akademie der Künste Berlin, 2006. In 2004 he founded the online art magazine artnet.de and served as editior-in-chief from 2004 to 2008. From 2008 to 2009 he was executive and artistic director of Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin. “The White Male Complex” is the working title of a series of artworks and exhibition projects he has been working on since 2011. Currently he is preparing for an exhibition project with 20 Beijing based artists, “The 8 of paths”, which he will be co-curating in Berlin in 2014.

ÖVGÜ ÖZEN

Övgü Özen, born ( *1979) in Ankara/Turkey, is a Berlin based photographer. From 1999 to 2003 she studied photography in the Netherlands. Using mainly the technique of analogue photography the focus of Övgü Özen‘s work lies in the parameters of daily urban live.

JAN KAGE

Jan „Yaneq“ Kage lives in Berlin as a publicist, curator and a musician. He also promotes artists in his art space Schau Fenster and since eleven years through Party Arty – a big clubnight to celebrate the arts. He published a couple of books on the culture of HipHop and writes for geman magazines. Kage published short stories in different anthologies and as a book, the „Yaneqdoten“. He played a bigger role in the movie „Status Yo!“. Since five years he also hosts and produces the weekly show Radio Arty on 100.6 FluxFM in which he talks with artists and curators about their work. Jan Kage also contributed to other international radio stations. 2012 and 13 he also hosted the original youtube channel eNtR Berlin. Jan Kage has a university diploma in political science and sociology.

“The White Male Complex, No.2″ is a winter show. It is fair to assume that in February it will still be dark and cold in Berlin. It is also the time for advertising underwear in public spaces which bombard us with images of femninity and masculinity of the particluar provenance of the fashion world.

Size does matter – we learn that from advertisment banners around the globe. Just recently one could admire a much larger than life Christy Turlington on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz – dizzingly high up and in the freezing cold. Images like those are such an imposition on the viewer!

The artist Thomas „Kelvin“ Eller deals with such impertinence. For two weeks only a scarcely clad figure, 3 meters tall and 10 meters long, will be on display (enduring the cold) at Schau Fenster, a non-for-profit in the studio building on Berlin’s Moritzplatz.

The White Male Complex, No.2 is part of a series of exhibitions conceived of by Thomas Eller. Please find more information at www.thomaseller.com

Fluxus is probably the phenomenon in the art world of the 20th century that historians and other scholars have the most difficulty grasping. The reasons range from a simple lack of will to downright laziness. Although the contribution to the debate by many artists may have been by way of droll misleading comments, we have never shirked from clarifying the issue, if and when interest was shown. For the most part, though, historians suppose that living artists are just out to make trouble. Most art historians and mainstream curators continuously try to persuade the public that Fluxus was a movement, albeit an art movement, an all-out American affair. When these frenzied grumblings are connected to large economic interests one can into the bargain often find such a peculiar designation as Fluxism. But this is pure rubbish. Fluxus emerged almost as a creation to the sad truth that art for more than two hundred years found its classification within ‘isms’ and was resigned to being reduced to stereotyped personal expression. Fluxus stood in complete contrast to this world and became at least two incompatible entities. It was one thing in Europe in the years 1962 and 1963 and later something entirely different in the USA, at the time George Maciunas, without any tremendous success, attempted to transform the lot into one form and one strategy.

BEN PATTERSON | WIESBADEN

BRING HAMMER AND NAILS.

It’s coming! Like it or not, the 50th anniversary of Fluxus will be celebrated. And it is my hope that these celebrations will be the final „nails in the coffin“ of „institutional Fluxus“!

Poor Fluxus,…its very success sowed the seeds for its degeneration. What began as a radically experimental, free-wheeling, undefinable and un-named mix – an open exploratory spirit, rather than a defined genre of marketable goods – has become the victim of vested interests, jealousies and dogmatic „turf wars“ about „what is“ and „who owns“ the REAL definition of Fluxus. And only with a REAL definition can Fluxus be neatly catalogued, exhibited in a museum, capsulized in a chapter of art history and/or assigned values (cultural or monetary)…in other words, „be institutionalized“.

I believe it was Emmett Williams, who once said: „If you can define it, it ain’t Fluxus!“

And ironically, it was „Chairman George“ who first tried to define and control this wild river, called Fluxus, with his purges and excommunications in the mid-1960s.

So, what is my problem with a REAL definition of Fluxus? Simply, the act of defining already set limits on any quest of exploration or experimentation…quests that have been the life-blood of Fluxus – past, present and future. It stiffles experimentation with invisible threats of exclusion. Explorations leading in new directions might not pass an „institutionally defined“ test of what is or is not Fluxus. In the end „institutionalized Fluxus“ leads directly to „fossilized Fluxus“.

So, let us celebrate this endangered creature, called Fluxus, by hammering in the final nails, closing the chapter on definitions and opening/fluxing our minds to those new territories still waiting to be explored. The spirit of Fluxus existed long before G.M. and 1962. Now, it is our duty to get out of the way and let this lively spirit go about its business for a few more eons.

Ben Patterson

September 5, 2011

Wiesbaden

WILLEM DE RIDDER | AMSTERDAM

From the moment that Nam June Paik told me “You are Fluxus”, I got for the first time in touch with many people, all over the world, who (just like me) were playing with life itself. Already years before I stepped out of art, because (for me) it was based on an ancient authority, trying to control our lives with rules and regulations. They decided who was important enough to be allowed in their palaces (which they called museums, theaters or concerthalls). When I was a teenager I decided already to keep playing instead of starting a career. I wanted to discover unknown territories and go into a world beyond thinking and understanding. For the first time I met Fluxpeople who threw all media on one big heap and started playing with them in a completely different way than was allowed. It was like a big endless party where we could do whatever came up at that moment. Great Flux Events where regularly made up right at the spot. For the first time we could stream again, allow a flood to come up, keep changing, melt, have flux-diarrhea on stage and enjoy it just like we did in the beginning of our life, because when we were born, we didn’t think yet. Life was completely interesting. We disappeared completely in whatever happened and there was never a dull moment, until our parents and other authorities teached us how to think, how to behave, how to be normal, intelligent, good, strong, interesting, a winner, etc. etc. and that we will be judged as stupid, ridiculous and a loser if we dared to deviate from the allowed behavior. All over Europe I got involved in Fluxus-parties which were called happenings, events, performances or even concerts, where all the rules and regulations were laughed at. Enthusiasticly I started organizing big flux concerts in the Netherlands and George Maciunas decided to make me chairman for Northern Europe. He gave me many Flux works for the European Mail Order Warehouse. In the beginning the press and the artworld ignored Fluxus most of the time or judged it as ridiculous. I loved it. When later the art popes got interested, I was a litttle disappointed. Fluxus used to be a party, alas it became art. That’s why I started with friends in 1965 a newspaper in which everybody could publish whatever they wanted. A real flux-project that became quite popular in Holland. We even started clubs where everybody could jump on stage and do whatever they wanted. Real Fluxus, but we didn’t use the name at all. Fluxus has inspired me always and many more people even in the art world. Conceptual art, video art, multi media and other developments all stem from Fluxus. The young generation now plays with daily life as material by changing it completely instead of making paintings or video art. I even started using museums as material by organizing illegal exhibitions without their permission. Many visitors walked with headphones through their buildings, discovering all my illegal works, having a great time. I am very grateful, because all the fluxists have inspired me tremendously. Although Fluxus is now considered art, and even my European Mail Order Warehouse is right now exhibited in the MOMA New York, I keep playing with you, entering unknown territories. Yesterday I was standing close to the abyss, today I am fortunately one step further.

TAMAS ST.TURBA (SUPERINTENDENT OF IPUT) | BUDAPEST

SUMMARY OF THE VIITH INTERNATIONAL FLUXUS WORLD CONFERENCE – BEIJING, JANUARY 01-17 2011:

WHAT’S NEXT FLUXUS?

Sections:

Fluxus, Proto Fluxus, Neo-Fluxus, Post Fluxus, Modern Fluxus,

Mac-Unfluxus, Paleolithic Fluxus, Fluxus Rococo, Crypto Fluxus,

Fluxus Infra, Ultra Fluxus, Fuck the Fluxus, Go-Go Fluxus,

Kid Fluxus, Baptist Fluxus, Trans Fluxus, Surfluxus, Meta Fluxus,

Past Fluxus, Future Fluxus, Dead Fluxus, Everest Fluxus.

Registered Fluxclubs in the world: 145 025, members: 126 772 547.

Wild Fluxclubs worldwide: about 120 000, m.: 24 000 000.

(est.: by Unesco Fluxus Department, 2010).

192 countries sent only 90 873 delegates, because the NATO could not afford more sponsoring this year. (Ben Vautier was not invited.) 198 400 Events, Actions, Occurrences, and Happenings were done during 6 days in the Olympic St.Adion of Fluxers and the Fluxus Glory Museum of Heaven and different venues (streets, apartments, churches, schools, factories, offices, in the nature, etc.) simultaneously, the 7th day was the Luxus St.Rike Day.

Brasil and Angola want to limit the quota of performing Emmett Williams’ and Eric Andersen’s scores.

Philippine and Ireland walked out, because the Mail Art, the Female Art and the Email Art got the right to vote separately.

Signing petition against the ban of Fluxus in Iraq, Libya, Tibet, and Vatican.